Artisan designs for a mass produced world

Tracy Glover Studio

Lighting designer/glass blower Tracy Glover admires the bare bulb pendant, its fiery filament aglow inside a pristine, transparent bulb, suspended from a single socket. With her new handblown glass Metropolis Socket Pendants, she gives the exposed bulb pride of place, while clothing the commonplace socket in a unique, eye-catching way. The artful embellishment is featured in a single or multi-light pendant, and customizable in a myriad of colors and patterns so each piece is truly site-specific.

Designer/glassblower Tracy Glover introduces Blackburn Ceiling Lights in pendant and semi-flushmount configurations. The two new designs feature Tracy’s handblown glass diffusers in a myriad of customizable shapes, sizes, colors and patterns, so each piece is truly site-specific.

BLACKBURN PENDANT

Suspended from a round canopy offered in choice of five metal finishes, the pendant may be made in any of five shapes (Globe, Barrel, Canister, Enoki or Fishbowl) and a range of sizes. A variation on the canopy is available with multiple ports to transform the single pendant design into a multi-light design.

Patterns include a bubbled effect made with the Italian technique Primavera (shown in a solid color), the two-tone Ombre Primavera, Striped, Lace, Twist, Calamari, Licorice Stick and Ostrich. Clients may choose among 16 translucent solids and 29 colorways. (Pattern and color availability based on size specified.)

BLACKBURN SEMI-FLUSHMOUNT

Glass diffuser available in Globe or Fishbowl shape. Five-inch round canopy offered in choice of five metal finishes. Eight patterns in 16 solid colors and 29 colorways; shown is Tracy’s new Calamari motif.

INSPIRATION

The brand new Calamari pattern is rooted in sketches Tracy made of seed pods she found on a hike, which led to a series of vegetable drawings, including onions and corn cobs. She was considering how to interpret the drawings as glass vessels. Murrini, a traditional Roman glassblowing process, fuses bundles of colored glass canes, then slices through them. The effect is similar to a cross section of the corn cob. She loves Calamari’s capricious nature; no two are alike.

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Tracy has conceived her lighting — table and floor lamps, wall sconces and pendants — as a system of interchangeable parts offering a multiplicity of choices for the proportion and shape of base components, glass color, lampshade fabric, metal finishes and lamping. Likewise, the accessories — decorative hardware, vases and area rugs — are offered in a wealth of color combinations and patterns. This allows optimal room for our clients’ input: each piece can be site-specific, and, depending on the elements selected, quietly tasteful, dramatic, stately, or whimsical.

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Glassblower Tracy Glover premieres a line of playful glassware ideal for summer entertaining. Titled Fizzy Drinks, the handblown tumbler and double old fashioned styles exploit the traditional Italian Primavera technique, and build the bubbles right in.

The tall tumbler (6.25″H x 2 7/8″ diameter) and double old fashioned glass (4″H x 3.25″ diameter) are each offered in six translucent colors, darker at the base and organically lightening toward the lip. The surface is animated with bubbles, a reference to carbonation as well as to the aquatic inspiration for the design (see next paragraph). Colorways: Berry, Light Blue, Celery, Emerald, Sargasso, Turquoise, Steel Blue. Suggested retail price: $53 each.

The artist is an avid oarsman, rowing daily at dawn. Occasionally she takes her skiff to the edge of Pawtucket Falls to watch the lively foam and froth generated by the waterfall. At winter time, the water freezes, and she can break off slivers of bubbly ice, which spurred her to interpret the effect as a drinking glass.

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Glassblower Tracy Glover’s furnace burns 24 hours a day with molten glass always at the ready.

This unique artisan became mesmerized by a glassblower’s photo in a Rhode Island School of Design catalogue while studying architecture at Virginia Tech. She soon applied for a transfer and moved to Providence for the glass BFA that would change her life.

Career shift aside, she still looks back on her time as an architecture student with fondness. “As a freshman, my first professor was a Swiss-Italian man named Olivi Ferrari. He taught us that we don’t stop being artists once we walk out of the classroom. He said we should live our lives as artists, prepare food as an artist, begin our day as an artist,” she says. “That was really eye-opening for me, although I didn’t really get it until my first trip to Italy. Walking around Murano really got me excited about Italian glassblowing as a tradition, and I wanted to connect with the heritage and bring it forward into the U.S.”

And that’s exactly what she did. It was her sense of color and flow that made us stop dead in our tracks. Her lighting and decorative
accessories are bright, yet not overpowering, and marry hues together in triplicate for wonderful cane-stripe effects—a task that requires an incredible amount of delicacy and control.

But whether it’s a lamp, a hinge or a doorknob, she thinks every product should be equally beautiful and functional. She designs with the following always in the back of her mind: “If it doesn’t enhance your life, get rid of it.”